Originally published 2021-06-03.
On Saturday 29 May 2021, police in southern Bangladesh arrested Habib Talukder, a 50-year-old man known locally as "Tiger Habib", at his home in Madhya Sonatola village on the edge of the Sundarbans mangrove forest. Officials described him as the country's most wanted tiger poacher and said he had evaded capture for about 20 years.
The figure that made headlines around the world, that he had killed about 70 Bengal tigers, needs a caveat. Forest officials said the number came from Talukder's own boasts as reported by villagers and had not been verified. The formal case against him at the time involved the killing of three tigers and five deer. Even so, his arrest was a real moment for one of the world's most threatened tiger populations.
Who is "Tiger Habib"?
Talukder lives in Bagerhat district, where many families earn a living from the forest by fishing, cutting golpata palm leaves or collecting wild honey. Like many locals, he started out as a honey collector, work that takes people deep into tiger country. Officials believe he turned to poaching and built links with gangs that supply the illegal wildlife trade.
He had long been banned from entering the forest, and several cases were pending against him under Bangladesh's wildlife protection law. Each time police or forest guards raided the area, he slipped away into the mangroves or hid among neighbours. His reputation in the villages was mixed. Abdus Salam, a fellow honey hunter, told AFP that people "equally respect him and are scared of him", describing a man who could hold his own against tigers in the forest.
How the arrest happened
Acting on a tip-off, officers from Sharankhola police station picked him up in the early hours of 29 May. Station officer Md Abdul Mannan told the Dhaka Tribune that Talukder had kept slipping into the Sundarbans to hunt despite the ban, and that powerful gangs were involved in the trade. He was sent to jail to await trial.
Sharankhola police, acting on a tip-off, arrested Habib Talukder, 50, in the early hours of Saturday from Madhya Sonatola village, adjacent to the forest, under Southkhali union.https://t.co/wVc59Du48u
— Ds Sourav (@TheDsSourav) May 31, 2021
Regional forest conservation officer Mainuddin Khan said the arrest had brought "sighs of relief" to forest staff, adding that Talukder had been a big headache and a serious threat to the forest's wildlife.
What the numbers mean
Poaching tallies attributed to a single person are hard to check, because carcasses are rarely found and parts are sold quietly across borders. The "70 tigers" claim may be inflated, but even a fraction of that would be significant in a forest that holds only around a hundred tigers on the Bangladesh side.
The Sundarbans and its tigers
The Sundarbans, at the mouth of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers, is the largest mangrove forest on Earth, covering about 10,000 square kilometres. Roughly 60% lies in Bangladesh and 40% in India's West Bengal. Both parts are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, inscribed in 1987 (India) and 1997 (Bangladesh).
Tigers here are unusual. They swim between islands, live in a tidal maze of creeks and mud, and eat fish, crabs, deer and wild boar. They also have a long history of conflict with people who enter the forest for work, and attacks on fishermen and honey collectors still happen.
Camera-trap surveys show how fragile the population is. Bangladesh's count fell from an estimated 440 in 2004 (a figure based on less reliable pugmark methods) to 106 in 2015, then rose slightly to 114 in a survey published in 2019. More recent estimates put the figure at around 125.
Why tigers are poached
Tigers are killed for skins, bones, teeth, claws and meat. Much of the demand comes from parts of East and Southeast Asia, where tiger bone is used in traditional medicine and tonic wines, and skins are bought as status items. A single tiger can be worth thousands of dollars to traffickers, while poor villagers who do the killing earn only a fraction of that.
In the Sundarbans, poachers have used poisoned bait, snares and guns. Armed gangs, sometimes called "forest pirates", once ran kidnapping and extortion rackets in the mangroves and were linked to wildlife crime. A government amnesty and security campaign in the late 2010s reportedly led many of these groups to surrender, which is widely credited with helping tiger numbers stabilise.
How many Bengal tigers are left?
Older reports often say there are "fewer than 4,000 Bengal tigers in the wild". Current estimates suggest that is now roughly the right size but probably a slight undercount. India's 2022 survey estimated between about 3,170 and 3,680 tigers; Nepal counted around 355 and Bhutan about 131, with Bangladesh around 125. Taken together, the Bengal tiger population is somewhere around 3,700 to 4,300.
That recovery, driven largely by India and Nepal, is good news. But the Sundarbans population faces extra pressure: rising seas and increasing salinity are expected to shrink suitable habitat sharply in the coming decades, and cyclones such as Sidr in 2007 have already damaged large areas of the forest.
What helps protect tigers
- Enforcement and intelligence. Arrests of key poachers and traders, like this one, disrupt supply chains.
- Community support. Village tiger response teams and alternative livelihoods reduce both poaching and revenge killings after attacks.
- Cutting demand. Tiger products are illegal to trade internationally under CITES. Refusing to buy them, wherever you travel, removes the incentive.
- Monitoring. Regular camera-trap surveys show whether protection is working.
The arrest of one man does not end tiger poaching in the Sundarbans, but it removed someone officials saw as a central figure, and it showed that long-running cases can still be closed.
Sources: Al Jazeera / AFP, 1 June 2021; Dhaka Tribune, 30 May 2021; BBC News; Wikipedia: Bengal tiger; Wikipedia: Sundarbans; WWF: Tiger.
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